June 22, 2010

Our Will and God’s Will are one, they cannot be parted, and they cannot be separated.  Yet, we try with all our minds to make ourselves special in some way.  That idea of specialness is a sword, an illusion, but a sword when we believe it that separates our awareness from the awareness of the presence of God within us.  It is a mighty sword, but mighty only because we believe it.  In truth we cannot be separated from God and all we are created as is always intact.

Our true nature is One, not separation.  When we realize we are all One we see there can be no “specialness”.  Specialness makes one different from another and that is impossible if we are all One.  Yes, we bring great diversity to the Whole from our human life, but we are still always One, never separate, no matter how special we think we are.  Specialness is neither God’s Will or Our Will, for God’s Will and Our Will are One.  Whatever will is specialness must not be of God and therefore an illusion.

All God asks is to forgive our specialness.  It is simply to say, “I believed an error and am willing to let that belief go.  I am willing to see correctly.  I am willing to recognize that we all are One.”  This is the simplicity of forgiveness.  This is the simplicity of changing our minds and seeing our Oneness.  We allow ourselves to remember who we really are.  As we let go of our mistaken beliefs that we gave power by believing them, we release ourselves from their grip and our eyes are transformed before us, showing us the peace and love that has always been within us.

Do we really enjoy living the illusion of specialness?  Perhaps once in awhile we do, but most of the time we feel we are missing something.  We lack the awareness of the peace, joy, and love that is inherent in our God-being.  We lost touch with the grace of the Divine within us.  And so we looked to specialness to replace the Divine within us.  Specialness will never be Divine as it is the denial of Divineness.  Let go of the hell of specialness and see the Divinity within all.  We are One, unchangeable.  Let us live in that awareness and experience all we really are.  We are blessed.

June 15, 2010

Whatever form of specialness we cling to, we thus block the awareness of who we really are from ourselves.  The full awareness of our wholeness is dependent on the full forgiveness of any thought that is a block to our awareness.  We cling to that one specialness and thus cannot see clearly because we have not released that idea specialness.  We see either Truth of illusion, but not both at once.  We really need do very little to see our wholeness.  All we need do is release our attachment to the thought of any specialness.

Is it really that simple?  Yes, as long as we are willing to let go of everything.  But we are so used to our mistaken idea of specialness that we are very resistant to the idea of letting it go.  We have clung to it all our lives.  And we know old habits are difficult to let go of.  Once we do truly let go, we experience the wholeness of our being.  We feel the peace of God deep within us.  A feeling of joy and happiness comes up deep within us, warming our soul in a peaceful way that we can embrace without fear of it ever ending.  We know that what we are and feel in that moment is limitless and everlasting.  We recognize our Self in this bliss.

Letting go of all the specialness we have been unwilling to release gives us the freedom to see ourselves and each other clearly, as we really are.  We recognize the divinity of all creation wherever we look.  We know that it is all One, that it is all inseparable.  We have seen Oneness.  We have seen God.  We have seen ourselves and each other as we really are.  It brings such joy to our hearts that we find no need for the illusion of specialness anymore. And thus we can release all our thoughts of specialness, every one of them, without exception.  And we open our mind to the truth of our holiness.  We are at peace.  We are truly One.

June 8, 2010

Specialness is division, it is separation.  It attempts to divide what cannot be divided into unequal parts.  One must be “more”, or “better”, or “higher” than another.  Thinking along this line is surely treacherous.  It blocks our awareness of Truth.  It blocks the awareness of God and Love which cannot be divided up into pieces, equal or unequal.  Once we think anything is divided, we cannot think that anything is One.  The two ideas just don’t make sense with each other.  They are not compatible.  So we continually try to rationalize our separated way of thinking.

What is whole can be nothing but whole.  There can be no part of the whole for it is impossible for wholeness to be unwhole.  God created us by extension, not by separation.  We remain as God created us.  No one of us can be who we really are without the other.  Recognizing that we are one with each other is the return to the awareness of our wholeness.  In the changing of a thought we are transformed to the awareness of our true whole One Self, One with the whole of God.  It is silly, really, to think in any other way, because separated thinking is an error, a mistake.

But change comes miraculously in the instant we allow ourselves to think with the Mind of God.  It is the simple effort of letting go of our habitual way of thinking and being willing to allow the thoughts of God to come into our mind.  What a gift we give ourselves and each other when we let our thoughts from the Mind of God come forward into our awareness.  It is peaceful, it is joyous, and it is filled with love.

Love can never be divided.  We are either aware that we are the completeness of Love, or we have attempted to divide love into pieces and have thus blocked love from our awareness.  The attempt to make specialness is the attempt to divide love which cannot be divided.  We share the totalness of love with each other.  And we will only be aware of who we really are when we do recognize all of creation as One, undivided and whole.  We are as God created us and no one of us can ever be put asunder.  Be whole and let the treachery of specialness fade into nothingness where it is nothing.

June 1, 2010

Why do we have the need to see ourselves as special?  For when we do, we defend our specialness against the truth of who we are.  The belief in our specialness comes from the desire to make ourselves something other than who we really are.  The root of this comes from what we think our specialness is.  It always elevates us, makes us better than, more right than, or even less than another.  It is in direct conflict with God’s creation of the One Child of God.  God created us whole, complete, pure, and unchangeable.  But we work really hard at being special or making someone else special.

We have studied how our beliefs make what we see ; our world.  We find it impossible to hold two conflicting beliefs.  We must choose one or the other to truly believe what we believe.  So if we believe our specialness, then we cannot believe in our Oneness, our sameness.  When we believe that some are more special than others we cannot believe in the fullness of each one in unity.  If we are as God created us, with everything we really need and want at our disposal, complete and whole, with unlimited love and power, no one can be more special than another.  Specialness is impossible; nothing but an illusion.

This is not to say that there is no diversity in God’s creation.  There is infinite diversity in God’s creation.  We do not look the same, we have varied talents and skills, and we have varied abilities.  We each have things we do well and have the opportunity to use those talents at the direction and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  God never intended for us to all be the same, cookie cutter copies of each other.  What a boring world that would be.  And that boring copycat world would never reflect the vast grandeur of all God is.

We are asked to remember who we really are, the One Child of God and set aside the belief in specialness and differing values of each other.  When we choose to see with the eyes of Spirit and hear with the ears of Spirit, we see and hear the realm of God.  We begin to hear the Voice for God singing the praises of who we all are.  We begin to realize that we are all an equally essential part of God that can never be separated from God for we are all One in God.  Accept your and another’s priceless value in Oneness.  It can never be less or more because it is maximal.  We are maximal because we are One with God and all Creation.  Specialness fades away to nothing in the light of the Truth of who we really are.  Rejoice in wholeness.

May 25, 2010

We are just as God created us.  Created in the image of God we are pure, innocent, perfect, and unchangeable.  And so none of us is better or worse than, more or less than, or more or less special than anyone else in the eyes of God.  We are created equal.  This doesn’t say we all have the same talents or are carbon copies of each other.  It means we each have maximum value in the eyes of God and therefore in reality.

Last Sunday Rev Freda Smith talked about the shepherd that went looking for the 100^th sheep that had gone missing.  The shepherd would not rest until all 100 sheep were safely in the fold.  Not one was of sufficiently less value than any of the others to leave alone out in the cold.  We are each of maximum value to God.  But we are the ones who thought differently about our own worth and projected those ideas on God, making one of more or less value than another.  What were we thinking?  Simply this, we forgot who we are.  We lost the awareness of who we really are, the One Child of God.

Pursuing or continuing in the thought pattern of specialness is done so at the cost of peace.  Specialness is an idea that sets one or another apart from each other.  It supports the idea that one is better or worse, more or less than another.  It sets up the idea that one is more valuable than another, whether in the sight of others or in the perceived sight of God.  In setting up these ideas of an order of specialness, we limit ourselves whether we see ourselves as more or less special than each other.  In limiting each other in our thoughts, we deny ourselves the awareness of all God created us to be.

All we really are is right there within us and we share it in its entirety equally with each other.  All is shared in its entirety and nothing is withheld.  The minute we try to withhold any value from another we lose sight and awareness of God’s creation.  Limitation is not a part of creation.  It is merely a mistaken idea.  All we have that is real is shared with all of creation.  All that is real is indivisible.  It cannot be cut up and doled out according to our “specialness.”  Specialness is an illusion.  It is a mistaken thought that we can just let go of and see the Oneness of us all.  Free yourself and each other from the limited idea of specialness and thus release all of creation from its treachery.  God’s abundance will spring up within you and you will know the freedom of the awareness of who we really are.  The peace we seek will already be there within us and we will see it there.

May 18, 2010

Our relationships with each other are holy.  They are grounded in the reality of our being, holiness.  There is no specialness in holiness because we are all the same, holy.  It is impossible to be anything else when we recognize our true self and our Oneness with God and each other.  Yet we forget who we are and see ourselves differently again.  We see one better than the other.  We see ourselves shining above our brother or sister, making the illusion that one of us is special.  This is the mistake we make again and again.

This mistake is a pattern, a habit, a habitual way of thinking.  We know that we have a choice in what we think.  Are we willing to take responsibility for that thought?  Are we willing to let ourselves see that we actually have a choice in how w e think?  If we knew what misery we place ourselves in by thinking the way we do, we would change our thoughts in a flash.  So why don’t we?  We are afraid.

Our fear of God and our fear of each other come from our belief in specialness.  Remember how powerful we learned our beliefs can be?  We cannot believe two opposing things at one time.  We must choose what we will believe.  Will it be Truth and reality, or will it be illusion?  God has given us vision, true sight.  Are we willing to use that vision and see the truth of our sameness, our holiness, our existence as God created us?  Or will we choose to believe that we are special, that we are different even though we are all of God.

No more can we judge each other different from the reality of God’s creation.  It is impossible.  We cannot be anything else.  But we do have a choice in what we choose to believe.  Will we let that be in alignment with the Mind of God, our own true mind?  Or will we let our thoughts wander to the made up beliefs and illusions that are from the mind that thinks itself separate from God and each other?  It is always our choice.  When we let go of specialness, love comes flooding in.  It washes away all unloving thoughts, it clears our mind and lets the Mind of God rise up and be our purpose in holiness.  Let it be so today.

May 11, 2010

There is nothing that surpasses what God created.  All of God’s creation is whole, perfect, innocent, and unchangeable.  So if that is true, how can anything be “special”?  Specialness implies that there is something other than special!  It implies that something God created can be something less than its true nature.  Thus it follows that specialness can be attacked and is in danger of losing its specialness.  In God’s creation this is impossible.

As people who think we are separate, we often consider ourselves or someone else special.  We may refer to someone as our “special someone” or say that someone is special because of some trait or deed they have done.  In elevating one person to the status of special we make a judgment about that one and also make a judgment about others.  If one is special, another must be less than special or not special at all.

Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decision.  How have we decided to see ourselves?  How have we decided to see each other?  We truly are as God created us, One and inseparable, so we must all be of God, whole, and filled with love.  If we decide to see another as less than, or more than ourselves, we have made a decision that removes us from Oneness.  We have made a decision that attacks the wholeness of one or the other.

God created each of us just like the other, whole and One with God.  Can we let go of the need to be “special” or make someone else “special”?  Can we free each other from the attack of differentness?  Can we release the chains of limitedness we have bound each other with?  Specialness is a very poor substitute for love.  Love accepts all, for it knows that all is good.  It knows that all that is real is of God.  There are no exceptions.  We all share God’s purpose, which is Love.  It alone is real, and in the recognition of that love, we return to the awareness of who we really are, always have been, and always will be.  This is the state of Heaven.

May 4, 2010

Attaining and maintaining a state of peace.  This is the motivation for the Course.  This is why the Course exists.  Our mind is quiet in this state and we remember who we are and that we are One with God and all of Creation.  We remember God and Truth in this quiet state of peace.  This is really what we are seeking.  We just forgot what is was and so were looking in all the wrong places for something we already had.

Peace is God’s will for us.  It will enter when we let God in to our awareness.  Do we really think that a shadow, an illusion, can possibly come between ourselves and our Creator?  We are One with God and nothing can come between us.  Yet, we believe that something has.  We believe that we have been separated from God by something or someone that we have no control over.

Our belief in something other than Truth, our belief that something can separate us from God and the awareness of who we really are, is the only thing that keeps us from attaining a state of peace.  We have become so focused on what we believe to be true apart from God that we have let it cloud our vision, blur our awareness.  Yet it is so simple to let go of our beliefs and let God show us Truth.  Letting our will, the Will we share with God flow through us and bubble up from within us is an incredible joy.  It may seem difficult at first, but trusting God to show us the way is an easy thing once we let go of our beliefs and attachments that we made up.

The Course asks us to be willing to question everything we think we value, everything we think is true, and everything we think we believe.  Nothing can be omitted or withheld.  All must be open to be questioned, opened to the light of Spirit.  All that is real will remain and all that is not real will simply fade away if we are willing to truly let go of it.  What God creates has no alternative.  Everything is of God or an illusion.  When we grant this willingness, the state of peace wells up from within.  It rises to fill all of our awareness, and we experience the abundant love, peace, and joy that is God!  There is no alternative other than this.